**A lively interest in humble Mexican folk artistry developed in the United States as early as the l920's--along with an appreciation for emerging Mexican artists, such as the mural painters Diego Riviera and Jose Orosco, who were then working on an urbane and international level. Mexican silver jewelry, with its impressive craftsmanship, imagination, and exoticism, offered North Americans an opportunity to purchase on a small scale an authentic work of art that shared its roots with major movements in contemporary intellectual tastes. 
Within Mexico, artist colonies arose which produced enormously influential silver jewelry from the 1930's through the 1950's. The names associated with this movement--William Spratling and Margot de Taxco among many others--are revered by collectors today; glossy books document their jewelry masterpieces. The aesthetic of the 1960's and 1970's brought its own influences to Mexican silver, which continues to be made and sold today in extraordinary quantity.**
Marcial Chavez Embriz, the last of the Spratling silversmiths
Marcial Chavez Embriz in the 1940s.
The signed photograph of Spratling says "To my powerful collaborator Marcial Chavez"
Spratling's shop "La Florida" in Taxco
Party at Spratling's Ranch
Marcial Chavez Embriz 
.
